tech savvy ... parents?

In the last two weeks my parents have managed to out-tech me. Keep in mind I am not on the cutting edge of technology, so out-teching me requires no great effort of any sort. But one day I'm talking to my mom, and I discover that both she and my father have acquired iPad 2s for themselves. Wha-what? Hey that's cool.

Then last night I'm talking to my father, and the conversation goes something like this:
Rick: "I finally got myself a gift for christmas and my birthday."
Andy: "Seems a little late for those. What did you get?"
Rick: "A battery for my truck."
Andy: (underwhelmed, hesitates) "Hey, that's great!"
Rick: "The old one has been in there since 2003, so I figure I got my money's worth."
Andy: (choke) "For as often as it sits around unused, I'd say yes, you got a great value."
Rick: "Then I went to the to the AT&T store. Do you know what they sell there?"
Andy: (feeling like a sneak attack just occurred, hesitates again) "You got an iPhone?"
Rick: "No it's a 4G."
Andy: "Huh? Yeah, of course, an iPhone?"
Rick: "What? Oh, yeah. I'm all set up for email and using it for work."
Andy: "Wow, that's cool. How do you like it?"
Rick: "It took these guys 10 emails going back and forth yesterday just to decice whether they wanted to fly to Larime or Denver. 10 emails. Seems like kind of a waste to me."
Andy: "Maybe your limited computer use over the last ... oh ... 15 years or so has insulated you from the way people communicate these days. Why bother talking to anyone when you can text or email them and never face them?"
Rick: "Yeah but 10 emails?"

Anyway, you get the point, and now my father has a iPhone before I do. Here I've been waiting patiently for Verizon to get the thing, and once they did I waited paitently again to convince myself that I really want to spend a couple hundred dollars to buy into this life changing technology that will fix everything for me. And literally as I am on the verge of pulling the trigger and going with a Verizon iPhone, Laura says "Oh, hey, I can get a discount though work with AT&T.", so I hesitated.

Ok, this blog is falling apart quickly. Anyway, my parents are savvier than me.

Anniersary the 8th

Happy Anniversary to my lovely wife of 8 years! I wish I could afford to sweep you off to Hawaii or maybe even Paris, but for now I'll just give you a big hug and kiss and tell you how much I love you.

negatives to digital

I mailed an envelope full of film negatives to Utah yesterday where they will be scanned into digital format, far faster and more effectively than I could ever do. When I receive the data DVD back in about a month, I will have roughly 350 photos from my time at Unitrans all nicely digitized for upload to my flickr account, for sharing, etc. I'm fearful that many of then won't be as crisp as I hope (scanning doesn't make a bad picture better), but this professional service will yield better results than my scanner can produce with the positive images.

Film negatives? What the hell are those?

I'd been thinking about doing this for years, and was finally inspried to do it because (1) the new Unitrans shop manager was asking me for copies of my RT Sunset and Solano Field photos, (2) my father-in-law has previously used and been happy with the place I am using, and (3) they were having a sale.

So someday soon I may have a lot more photo content to share.

related to Hollywood star

I couldn't pass up posting this. Apparently I am related to a famous Hollywood star.
Check out this guy's middle name!

Or it's just a coincidence.